Gingrich's "Anti-Semitic Diatribe"

Richard Silverstein didn't like the sound of Newt Gingrich's South Carolina victory speech:

We are going to argue American exceptionalism, the American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, the American federalist papers; the founding fathers of America are the source from which we draw our understanding of America. [Obama] draws his from Saul Alinsky, radical left-wingers and people who don’t like the classical America.

Silverstein:

Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is replete with multiple references to the Founding Fathers and American constitution as the embodiments of liberty and democracy. But note how he sets up Alinsky as a radical who is alien to America. The final nail in the coffin is his reference to “classical America.” Who or what is classical America? It is of course white Christian America, everything that Saul Alinsky and many of you out there reading this are not. This is a classic anti-Semitic diatribe gussied up in Tea Party rhetoric.

War Cry

Gleeful Democratic operative Paul Begala on the heart-clutching panic being experienced today by those Republicans who once had the idea that they might actually contend in November -- and on how Newt Gingrich confounded them all in the birthplace of the Confederacy:

Gingrich won the South Carolina primary not because of advertising, but rather because of his debate performances. Eighty-eight percent of South Carolina Republicans said the debates were important to making up their minds, and in the two key debates, Gingrich hit every GOP erogenous zone. He scolded Fox News's Juan Williams when Williams asked him about the dog-whistle language Gingrich uses to stir up racial stereotypes. Williams, the author of Eyes on the Prize, a respected history of the civil-rights movement, knows of what he speaks. But Gingrich knows his party's base, and the base loves both the coded language and attacking anyone who calls them on it.

Chris Christie For President

My Nixon brother Hugh Hewitt, who says the GOP nomination will be decided by the Florida primary, puts the best face on the South Carolina debacle:

Newt’s greatest contribution to the race has been to demonstrate that the style of political argument that Chris Christie and Paul Ryan debuted in the last couple of years actually is not a luxury but a necessity to win hearts and minds in the GOP. The 2012 election will not be won because of Mitt Romney’s tax returns or his years at Bain, or because of Newt’s past marriages or the payments from Freddie.

Fair enough, Hugh, when it comes to Gingrich's ADD policy motor mouth. But never have I heard Gov. Christie or Rep. Ryan say that the president of the United States takes his inspiration from socialist Saul Alinsky instead of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Our country could be wounded by Gingrich's demagoguery. Is it too late for a Christie candidacy?

Does Newtonian Chaos Really Loom?

His surging polls notwithstanding, I'm stunned by the idea that Newt Gingrich might win the South Carolina primary. Until just recently, electability has been the GOP watchword. Tilting to Gingrich would be sheer masochism. His ethical lapses are legion. His own people drove him from the House speakership. In national polls, his negatives are astonishingly high. If he really cared about his party, the decent thing would've been not to run at all. Gingrich's mentor Richard Nixon stayed away from every GOP convention after his 1974 resignation until his death 20 years later. He didn't want to make his unpopularity the story. He didn't want it to be all about him.

Gingrich has no such scruples. He's been acting out since Mitt Romney thrashed him in the Iowa caucuses, though impotently at first as his rage got the better of him. His super-PAC erred by producing an inaccurate hard-left critique of Romney's business practices. While history teacher Gingrich knows all about the power of the big lie, this first outing backfired. He had been in much better form preparing to run in 2010, when he cunningly appealed to some Americans' worst instincts by comparing Muslims to Nazis. His former colleague Joe Scarborough called it hate speech. He never apologized for that rhetorical atrocity and issued a tepid disavowal of the Romney attack only after party elites and even rival Rick Santorum made him look silly for having a PAC that was feeding ammunition to President Obama.

Gingrich got his mojo back once his self-righteousness cooled and hardened. He stood on a stage in South Carolina and attacked a black journalist for asking him in all reasonableness to defend calling a black commander-in-chief the food stamp president. This week he attacked another journalist to deflect a legitimate question about his poor behavior toward one of the two women he'd pledged to love in health but abandoned in sickness. What makes Gingrich's personal life relevant in a presidential debate is that it helps illuminate the kind of man he is -- egotistical, undifferentiated, vengeful, and selfish, all poor indicators of an effective executive and especially presidential temperament. You only have to listen to what he says to appreciate the dangerous extent of his self-adoration.

He has spent the last two and a half weeks doing to his party exactly what he does to his women. Party leaders are now trying desparately to forestall the catastrophe of his coming within reach of being nominated. But these nutty elections of ours are decided by voters, not elites. If South Carolina Republicans are seduced into codependency by his dulcet tones and corrosive narcissism, if Florida follows where they lead, and if their nomination process is plunged into Newtonian chaos as a result, then their party deserves to lose. If he's nominated, it had better.